First published in 2017

Copyright Tom Gilling and Terry Jones 2017

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photographer/journalist The Area News

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 Contents

1 Aussie Bob takes a punt 1

2 Guns and godfathers 10
3 A new crop 17
4 Boom town 22
5 Shame 32
6 Coleambally drug bust 49
7 Mackay has to go 58
8 Theyve killed Don 78
9 Follow the money 95
10 A clairvoyant and a royal commission 119
11 Another body 135
12 Mr Asia 143
13 Special tomatoes 159
14 Aussie Bob on the run 180
15 Bodies in the river 203
16 Aussie Bob: dead or alive? 226
17 Parrington pays 245
18 Cops and crops 266
19 Witness X 285
20 Blackmail 299
Afterword 305

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 CHAPTER 1

Aussie Bob takes a punt

Domenico Trimboli was 33 years old when he and his wife,

Saveria, bought Farm 869, near Griffith, in the heart of the
Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area in far western New South
Wales. They were among the thousands of poor Italian
migrants who began arriving in Australia in the 1920s.
In the early days, living conditions were primitive, with
homes made from hessian bags whitewashed inside and
out (they gave the settlement its name, Bagtown) and bare
earth floors. Many of the early soldier-settlers walked away
broken-hearted, unable to eke an existence from their tiny
plots of land, but their places were soon taken by migrants
eager to create a new life for themselves in their adopted
country. Crops grew in the rust-coloured soil without natural
rainfall, watered bythe mighty Murrumbidgee River. To
those like Domenico and Saveria Trimboli, accustomed to
the hardship of life in Calabria, New South Wales appeared
a land of hope and opportunity.

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

The vegetables and fruit trees Domenico planted on his

two-acre holding were enough to support Saveria and the
three young children they had brought with them from Italy.
It didnt take long for Trimbolinow known as Domenic,
and a naturalised Australian citizento pick up the language
as he travelled around Bagtown selling his prize cauliflowers
from the back of a horse-drawn cart.
Like their father, the children soon acquired Australian
names: Joe (the first born), Josie and Elizabeth. All three
were well-behaved children who adapted well to their new
country, which was slower to adapt to them. The olive-
skinned Calabrian and Sicilian migrants were commonly
referred to by Australians as dagoes or wogs, their family
traditions and customs viewed with suspicion by the districts
Anglo-Saxon pioneers.
In the cane fields of far north Queensland, Calabrian men
bound to the old hierarchical ways had formed clans, intim-
idating and extorting from their fellow countrymen, burning
the crops and poisoning the livestock of those who refused to
pay. Further resistance was met with bombings, woundings
and murder. Although the Queensland cane fields lay thou-
sands of kilometres from the orchards and gardens of the
Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, news of the violence spread
quickly among the migrant families in Griffith. They could
leave Italy but they could not escape the mafia.
On 26 January 1932 Rocco Trimarchi, who had moved to
New South Wales after several years on the cane fields, was
shot dead at his farm in Griffith. Trimarchis son, Samuel,
wasconvicted of the murder, although an autopsy found that
two guns of different calibres had been used. Regarded by
police as having been the head of a branch of the Camorra
Society, the elder Trimarchi was Griffiths first godfather.

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 AUSSIE BOB TAKES A PUNT

Several Italian men witnessed the shooting but a police

report noted that nearly all of them gave different evidence
to that in their statements... which showed that they
had been instructed in what to say by some person in the
meantime. Was Rocco Trimarchis murder the result of a
family feud? Was it an honour killing? Those who knew
were not saying.

nnn

Domenic and Saveria Trimbolis second son, Bruno, was

born on 19 March 1931. The first of the Trimboli children
to be born in Australia, Bruno was a happy-go-lucky boy,
average at school and with no obvious talents to set him apart
from the other Italian kids in a country town full of Italian
kids. His parents worried for his future. Older brother Joe
was destined for the army and sisters Josie and Betty were
expected, like the daughters of other Italian families, to find
good husbands. But where did that leave Bruno?
It was obvious that the Trimbolis two-acre farm would
not be enough to support Bruno as well as his parents. For
a young man in a country town, the only financial security
seemed to lie in a trade. But Bruno had no desire to spend
the rest of his life as a plumber or a painter. Nor did he have
much interest in getting a job in a bank or post office.
As a child, Bruno Trimboli had done his share of chipping
weeds and picking vegetables, working ten to twelve hours
a day from sun-up to sundown. Bruno was not afraid of
physical work but hard labour under the hot Australian sun
was not his idea of a future. While his schoolmates settled
down to work on their family farms, Bruno decided to seek
his fortune in the city.

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

In Sydney wartime memories were still fresh enough for

an Italian name to be a handicap, so Bruno Trimboli adopted
the name Robert, which became the quintessentially Aus
tralian Bob. At the same time he changed his surname, from
Trimboli to Trimbole. With the new name came a new job as
an apprentice mechanic at Pioneer Tours.
Affable and easy going, Bob Trimbole had no trouble
making friends. Aussie Bob, as some were already calling
him, also started to make a name for himself as a gambler,
but for that he needed a steady supply of cash. While his
days were spent working on bus engines, nights found Bob
playing two-up and baccarat in Sydneys illegal gambling
dens. Many of the illegal games were run by starting price
(or SP) bookies. Somebody at the game was always good for
a tip, a sure thing crying out for a punt, and it wasnt long
before Aussie Bob was a fixture at the track.
Bob was not a big drinker. Until the mid-1920s alcohol
had been prohibited in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area
and many of the migrant families had grown used to going
without. Bob would drink a beer socially, or have a few
glasses of wine with a meal, but he prided himself on his
sobriety.
In those days Sydneys pubs and hotels were still governed
by the six- oclock lockout, but some landlords found
cunning ways to continue trading out of hours: hoisting
blackout blinds on windows after 6pm; serving longneck
bottles; setting up kegs of beer in back rooms that could
only be entered by patrons who knew a special code-knock.
In some places regulars sat around tables with tea cups and
saucers in front of them, along with glasses of water and ice
and a teapot containing a full bottle of Scotch, just in case
the police turned up to check on the curfew.

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 AUSSIE BOB TAKES A PUNT

Their ingenuity was matched by the illegal gambling

bosses, who set up games in warehouses, fruit-packing sheds
and abattoirs. Their cockatoos would pass the word to taxi
drivers about where the game was being played. The organ-
isersthere might be two or three in the bigger townshad
an uncanny knack of knowing when a police raid was
imminent. The police were happy enough to turn a blind eye
in return for a few quid.
It was an exciting time for young Bob Trimbole, who
watched and learned.
When Bob was flush, he had the chance to win serious
money. He returned favours by staking mates down on their
luck. In the illegal two- up dens Bob would spend hours
throwing pennies for a run of heads or tails. When Bob
was on a winning streak he was generosity personified: he
insisted on paying for everything. But when his luck was out
he would not hesitate to beg a loan.
Bob was hooked. Smitten, too, by a young secretary he
had met, Joan Quested. Joanie was smart and had a great
sense of humour. They had fun together, and for Bobs sake
she was prepared to put up with the gambling. They married
in Sydney on 18 April 1952. After the wedding, she persuaded
him to move back to Griffith. Joan wanted him to have his
own business, an automotive workshop. Griffith, she thought,
would give them the chance to get ahead. And it would take
Bob away from the temptations of Sydneys gambling dens.
Moving to Griffith was what Joan wanted, so Bob was
willing to give it a try. But he was less confident than Joan
about his ability to run a business. He looked around for
something different, thought briefly about taking over his
fathers farm. But two acres could never be anything more
than a hobby-farm and what Bob needed was an income.

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

The newlyweds lived on the Trimboli farm for seven

months before Bobs parents, Domenic and Saveria, decided
to sell up and move to the Sydney suburb of Fairfield. Stopping
Bob from gambling was not easy, but Joan convinced him that
they would have no worldly possessions while he continued
to gamble their money away. In 1953 the Trimboles leased
premises for an automotive garage in Olympic Street, Griffith,
across the road from the town swimming pool. They called it
the Pool Garage. Bob and Joan lived next door. The first of
their four children, Gayelle Joan, arrived on 17 January 1954.
She would be followed by Glenda Julie on 21 May 1955;
Robert Kenneth on 7November 1956; and Craig Grainger on
15 March 1959.
The business started as a repair garage. Later Bob
installed petrol bowsers and added a panel beating and spray
painting workshop. Joan knew that Bob was taking money
from the business to bet. He played cards with men he met
at the garage. In April, games of ANZAC Day two-up were
played in the fruit packing sheds. The biggest was at Alpens
trucking shed, where hundreds and thousands of pounds
changed hands in an all-night game, some of it going to the
local Black & Whites Football Club.
Griffith, Joan was finding out, was not the sleepy country
town she had imagined, but at least it was keeping her
husband away from the sleazy characters he had rubbed
shoulders with in the city gambling dens. While living in
Griffith meant fewer opportunities for Bob to get near a race
track, there was hardly a hotel or club in town that didnt
have its own resident SP bookie.
Trimbole would seek out the bookies at the Griffith
Hotel, the Victoria Hotel and the Coronation Club, a haunt
known almost universally as the Coro. The club never

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 AUSSIE BOB TAKES A PUNT

seemed to shut. Popular with journalists, cops and out-of-

town lawyers, it had a handful of poker machines and hosted
the odd game of cards. Ladies of the night could often be
seen loitering in the shadows out the back.
Revelling in the role of successful businessman, Trimbole
made plenty of friends among the towns Calabrian commu-
nity. With his easy command of the Australian language,
Aussie Bob quickly gained respect among impressionable
members of the Romeo, Sergi, Catanzariti, Agresta, Perre,
Zirilli and Barbaro familiesclans with strong ties to the
southern Italian secret society known as La Famiglia.
There was one man Trimbole was especially keen to
befriend: the Griffith godfather, Pietro Peter Calipari
(also spelt Callipari and Callipare). Calipari owned a shoe
shop, Riverina Shoes, in the main street of Griffith, in
whose basement he would preside over meetings to sort out
business and family disputes among Calabrian families. Since
arriving in Griffith in 1951 from the Calabrian town of Plat,
Calipari had won esteem while accumulating wealth far
beyond what might have been expected from a simple shoe
shop. Trimbole and Calipari both belonged to La Famiglia,
but the two men moved in different circles, Calipari
appearing more interested in cultivating Anglo-Saxon profes-
sionalspoliticians, lawyers, accountants, real estate agents
and property valuerswhile Trimbole mixed more with
the Calabrians.
Calipari was a confidant of La Famiglias elders while
Trimbole belonged to the second generation. Although
charming in person, Calipari was guarded and calculating,
a sharp contrast to the impulsive and spendthrift Trimbole,
whose gambling was already putting a strain on his marriage.
On his way past Riverina Shoes to the Victoria Hotel,

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

Trimbole would wave a hand and the pair might exchange a

few words, but Calipari made sure Trimbole knew his place.
At home, Joan was struggling to get by. The garage was
now no more than a front for her husbands gambling. If
Trimbole had a win on the horses, there would be money to
pay the household bills, but often he didnt win. The phone
was cut off. If an important call had to be made, Trimbole
would borrow the phone of a neighbouring business. Elec-
tricity was going to be next. On 1 November 1968, despite
his claims that the garage was successful, Robert Trimbole
was declared bankrupt, owing $10,986.63. Within days, the
Pool Garage burnt down, the flames destroying Trimboles
commercial assets and all his records. Luckily for Trimbole,
the business was insured for a sum of around $10,000. The
money would have allowed Trimbole to settle some of his
debts but the insurance company smelt a ratit suspected
the fire had been deliberately litand refused to pay out.
With her daughters, Glenda and Gayelle, in their teens,
Joan felt the family needed somewhere bigger. After the
garage fire the family shifted temporarily to Farm 1811,
Lake Wyangan before moving to a Housing Commission
home on a dog-leg road on Scenic Hill, overlooking Griffith.
Money was so tight that Joan had to rely on the generosity
of neighbours, borrowing a pint of milk, a half loaf of bread,
half pound of butter or few cups of sugar when she needed
them. That was how country people lived in those days,
neighbours sharing garden produce and passing food staples
over a backyard fence, small amounts of money changing
hands to tide the recipient over until payday.
It had been a while since Bob Trimboles last payday.
Whatever money he had went on gambling. Joan bowed to
the inevitable and started looking for work. It wasnt long

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 AUSSIE BOB TAKES A PUNT

before she was helping visitors as Griffiths first part-time

tourist officer.
Bob, meanwhile, found himself a new job with a company
called Atlantic Amusements that supplied and serviced amuse-
ment machines. The machines were often converted to illegal
gaming and leased or sold to gambling clubs for a cut of the
profits. Bobs office in Griffith seemed to be the Coro Club
bar, managed by his mate Archie Molinaro. The Coros relief
barman, Freddy Guglielmini, serviced pinball machines for
Atlantic.
The job took Trimbole all over the state but exactly
what he did was a mystery to Joan. Bob seemed incapable of
giving a straight answer. Family friends put Bobs secretive-
ness down to his embarrassment at being an undischarged
bankrupt. He told Joan the work involved installing and
repairing pinball machines but she had her doubts.
The trips away became longer. Bob would return with
wads of cash which he attributed to gambling. In years to
come Joan would recall Bob walking through the house
tossing money in the air, spreading banknotes across the
kitchen table and entreating her to buy something nice for
herself and the kids.
For all his faults, Bob Trimbole loved his family. All
the children were good swimmers and he and Joan enjoyed
going to the Olympic pool to watch them race. When Bob
promised her that the familys fortunes had turned for the
better, Joan wanted to believe him.

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 CHAPTER 2

Guns and godfathers

Antonio Sergi (born 29 October 1935) met Bob Trimbole

soon after arriving in Griffith in October 1952 with his
parents, Giuseppe and Maria. Having anglicised his own
name, Bob took to calling Antonio Tony and the name stuck.
Trimbole was in his early twenties and Tony Sergi in his late
teens. (Tony Sergi would later establish a winery at Tharbo-
gang. Infuture he will be referred to as Winery Tony.)
The Sergis, like the Trimbolis, came from Plat, Calabria,
a town renowned for being a stronghold of the Calabrian
mafia or ndrangheta. Bob always took an interest in new
arrivals from Calabria, especially when they came from a
large family like the Sergis who commanded serious respect
back in Plat.
Giuseppe Sergi and his family lived for a year with
Giuseppes brother Franceso (Frank) on Farm 197, Hanwood,
before moving to Farm 970, which was owned by Roy
Catanzariti. (When Catanzariti sold the farm, it was bought

10

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 GUNS AND GODFATHERS

by another of Giuseppes brothers, Domenico Mick Sergi.)

Giuseppes prospects improved when he bought Farm
1305, a 21- acre (eight-hectare) property at Tharbogang,
west of Griffith. Planted with orange and apricot trees,
the farm promised a stable future far removed from the
precariousness of their lives in Calabria. There would be
setbacksaflood drowned many treesbut otherwise Farm
1305 was able to provide a subsistence living for Giuseppe
and Maria Sergi and their seven children.
Other Calabrian families bought properties in Thar-
bogang, Hanwood and Yoogali. These farms typically
grew citrus or deciduous fruit, with cash crops of onions,
pumpkins or melons grown between rows of trees. A concen-
tration of Calabrian-owned farms near Tharbogang on either
side of the Griffith to Hillston railway track would become a
regional bastion for La Famiglia.
Simon Mackenzie, a Griffith solicitor who had taught
himself to understand the native dialects of his Calabrian
clients, showed the migrant farmers how to invest their
hard-earned surpluses to get them through the inevitable bad
years. The flow of dividends brought a multimillion-dollar
cash economy to Griffith. Mackenzies work on behalf of
his Italian clients impressed the godfather, Peter Calipari,
who made sure the lions share of Calabrian business went
to Mackenzies firm. Calipari would later say, The Italian
people of Griffith should erect a monument to Simon, he is
helping to make everyone wealthy.

nnn

It wasnt just Italians who built a new future for themselves

in Bagtown. Five years before Domenico Trimboli arrived

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

with his wife and children from Plat, a Newcastle fitter and
turner named Len Mackay decided to try his luck in the
new township on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River. No
farmer himself, Mackay knew there was money to be made
from selling farmers the things they needed. He opened a
furniture store on the southern side of the main irrigation
canal, one of thousands of kilometres of water supply
channels snaking across the flat landscape. The channels
carrying water from the Murrumbidgee had already begun to
turn virgin bush into lush orchard, and Len Mackay found
a ready market for his pots, pans, kitchenware, household
gadgets and furniture. At weekends Mackay turned bus
driver, screwing garden seats onto the tray of his delivery
truck to carry groups of picnickers down to the shady river.
After a fire burnt down his original shop, Mackay
built a larger one on the western side of the expanding
township. Three children were born, the youngest, Donald,
on 13 September 1933. As Griffith developed into one of the
principal towns in the new foodbowl of the Riverina, Len
Mackays furniture store thrived.
The plan had always been for Don and his elder brother,
Bill, to take over the family business from their father, and by
the mid-1950s both brothers were working in the store. Don
was the more outgoing and he became actively involved with
local sporting groups and church and community organisa-
tions. Public services that were taken for granted in the cities
barely existed in Griffith and Don became a driving force
behind the establishment of a support group for children with
disabilities. It was through his involvement with the church
that he met his future wife, Barbara Dearman, a dental nurse
who was studying in Sydney to be a physiotherapist. They
married in 1957 and soon afterwards Barbara found a job at

12

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 GUNS AND GODFATHERS

Griffith Base Hospital. While Bill Mackay looked after the

furniture business, Dons community interests continued to
grow: he was instrumental in setting up the future Kalinda
School for disabled kids and became foundation president of
the Pioneers Lodge homes for the aged. It was no surprise
when Donald Mackay began to be spoken of as a potential
political candidate, although nobody could be sure which
party he might represent.

nnn

In the 1965 New South Wales state election the long-serving

Labor government was ousted by the LiberalCountry Party
coalition and Premier Jack Renshaw was replaced by the
Liberals Robert Askin. With the strong support of Griffiths
Italian community, Albert Jamie Grassbyknown to almost
everyone as Albucked the trend by holding the seat of
Murrumbidgee for Labor.
Although Peter Caliparis name was not among those
listed as members of Grassbys campaign committee, the
Griffith godfather had played a significant role in getting
Grassby elected by helping deliver the Calabrian vote to
Labor. But Caliparis political support came at a price, and it
was not long before the newly elected member for Murrum-
bidgee was required to pay.
Within a month of Grassbys maiden speech to the
New South Wales Parliament, the police raided properties
in Griffith, Sydney and Canberra searching for weapons
thought to be linked to a series of murders and attempted
murders at Melbournes Queen Victoria produce market.
One of the properties searched was the Griffith home of
Peter Calipari.

13

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

Rumours had been circulating for some time about a

cache of weapons said to have been smuggled from Italy to
Australia. Some of the weapons recovered by police during
the raids had had their serial numbers removed to avoid
identification. There was talk of a shadowy Federal Police
agent named Frank Titzoni working undercover in Griffith.
Titzoni was a mystery man who was said to run with the
rabbits and hunt with the hounds. Maybe he was a police
agent and maybe he wasnt. Maybe he didnt exist at all.
On 28 September 1965 Peter Calipari appeared before
the Griffith Court of Petty Sessions charged with possession
of an unlicensed pistol. His was one of four houses searched
by police in Griffith and nearby Lake Wyangan, with the
chief of the criminal investigation branch saying police had
been told that Italians from Calabria were preying on others
and had threatened violence and extortion.
The Griffith raids had been organised from Sydney, but
local police were called to help. The aim of the operation was
to break up groups active in Sydney, police said. Properties
were searched for weapons and evidence of extortion or
other illegal activities.
A Griffith detective, Senior Constable Jack Ellis, gave
evidence against Calipari. He told the magistrate that police
had found a .25-calibre Regina automatic pistol and four
rounds of ammunition in the locked glove box of Caliparis
car. The pistol was wrapped in newspaper inside a plastic
container. Calipari denied having any knowledge of the
pistol, insisting he hadnt opened the glove box for six or
seven months.
Cross-examined by Caliparis solicitor, Simon Macken-
zie, Ellis volunteered: Mr Calipari is a man of excellent
character. Well respected in the Italian and Australian

14

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 GUNS AND GODFATHERS

community. He told the court that Caliparis shoe shop had

been burgled three times in twelve months and that Calipari
often worked there late.
The new Member for Murrumbidgee, Al Grassby, also
gave character evidence for Calipari, claiming to have known
him for ten years and praising Calipari for his contribution
to the Italian community. According to Grassby, Calipari
had been under consideration for a Commonwealth govern-
ment award for his work.
In his efforts to persuade the magistrate not to record
a conviction against his client, Simon Mackenzie listed the
names of numerous people who were supposedly willing to
give character evidence on Caliparis behalf. They included
the Wade Shire president, Nevis Farrell, and the Italian
consular agent Frank Testoni.
Mackenzie then made the unusual gesture of offering
to take the witness stand himself and testify on oath to the
quality of Caliparis character. His explanation for the gun
was that as a consequence of the robberies Calipari feared he
might be attacked while working alone in the shop.
The pistol was obtained after the last robbery but Mr
Calipari has never fired it, Mackenzie told the court.
MrCalipari is not a man of violence. There is no suggestion
the weapon was to be used for illegal purposes. He asked
for the provisions of Section 556A of the Crimes Act to be
extended to Calipari, to enable him to leave the courthouse
free of the stain of conviction.
Caliparis supporters had done their best to portray the
godfather as a simple shopkeeper afraid for his safety, but
the magistrate was not convinced. Possession of the gun
constituted a grave and serious offence, he said, which
could not be dealt with by dismissing the information and

15

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

failing to record a conviction. He fined Calipari a nominal

$20 and ordered the pistol to be forfeited to the Crown.
The punishment was less significant than the conviction.
By his carelessness with the gun, Calipari had exposed the
Griffith families to unwelcome public attention. The god
fathers connection to the mafia raids had been too close
forcomfort.
Al Grassby sprang into action to limit the damage,
claiming to have statistics showing that Griffith was one of
the most law-abiding communities in Australia.
Within hours of giving evidence for Calipari in court,
Grassby stood up in parliament to denounce the police raids
and the smear of Mafia that, he claimed, had been cast over
his electorate. Ridiculing the idea that there was a vicious
Mafia Society in Griffith, Grassby called on the premier to
clear the good name of Griffith and Murrumbidgee by a
statement repudiating these smears. Anyone who believes we
have a Mafia in Murrumbidgee is deluding himself, Grassby
declared. He has been watching too much late night TV.
In Griffith, however, many citizens were uncomfort-
able with the links that were beginning to emerge between
their town and the mafia killings in Melbourne. On 4 April
1963, the 47-year-old mafia boss Vincenzo Angilletta had
been killed with two blasts of a shotgun outside his home
in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. On 16 January
1964 Vincenzo Muratore was shot dead, in almost iden-
tical fashion, while reversing his car from his driveway
inthe bayside suburb of Hampton. Both were connected
to the Calabrian-controlled vegetable wholesale business at
Melbournes Queen Victoria Market. There were suspicions
that members of Griffiths La Famiglia had relatives involved
in the same business.

16

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 CHAPTER 3

A new crop

While Bob Trimboles gambling habit killed off the Pool

Garage, the Murrumbidgee fruit growers had their own
problems. They would sit around at night and talk, Bob
and his Calabrian mates, about the neverending battle to
make a worthwhile return from growing crops with a short
shelf life on wafer-thin margins; the curse of boom seasons
that produced so much fruit that crops had to be left on the
ground; the exorbitant cost of delivering fresh produce by
road and rail to state capitals. Some were coping better than
others but it was a struggle for every single one of them.
Markets for fruit and vegetables hardly ever returned
much above production costs. Oranges grown in Griffith
might be worth only 150 per packed ton. For fruit going
to the juice factory, it could be as little as 50 to 100 per
ton. Citrus fruit that went to a grading and packing shed
was worth more: 1 to 2 per carton, two to five pence per
orange in pre-decimal currency.

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

Trimbole had watched his own father and relatives toiling

long hours in sweltering summers. Domenic had taught his
son the value of growing high value crops. In those early
days, it was cauliflowers; by the late 1960s there was a much
more lucrative optioncannabis.
No legal agricultural or horticultural crop could generate
anything like the returns offered by cannabis. As a processed
product, it was largely insulated both from the vagaries
of the weather and from the seasonal price fluctuations
that bedevilled citrus growers. Having lived through the
cropping booms and busts of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation
Area, Trimbole could not help noticing the consistently high
price of dried cannabis, which seemed to have an unlimited
shelf life. When Aussie Bob began to talk about the profits
waiting to be made from commercial marijuana trafficking,
his friends in La Famiglia listened.
Until the 1960s demand for marijuana in Australia had
largely been met by a combination of wild-grown cannabis
and plants grown in backyards. As the social use of cannabis
began to surge, so did the commercial possibilities for large-
scale marijuana cultivation. Those in the know collected
seeds from wild cannabis and established plantations in
remote national parks.
Trimboles plan was more ambitious. During his time
on the road for Atlantic Amusements Trimbole had identi-
fied a network of farmers capable of growing cannabis on a
commercial scale. Crops could be grown either close to home
or, if necessary, a safe distance away. Trimbole was aware
that immediate family and friends owned farms from one end
of New South Wales to the other, broad tracts of irrigated
country in places where summer crops rarely failed. The prop-
erties he was interested in for his marijuana were broadacre

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 A NEW CROP

farms with irrigation, planted for onions, melons, pumpkins

and carrots as well as lettuce, cabbages and cauliflower. The
whole operation would be controlled by La Famiglia.
The Calabrians comprised around 70 per cent of Grif-
fiths roughly 12,000 Italians (the Sergi family alone was
reputed to number around three hundred people). Trimbole
had close friendships among the second and third gener-
ations of Calabrian migrant families who owned farms
near Griffith. He understood and respected the patriarchal
authority that governed Calabrian society, and revered
the self-reliance that existed among the Sergis, Barbaros,
Romeos and other Calabrian families. While Aussie Bob
had married an outsider, his Calabrian friends continued to
marry among their own, perpetuating the cult of family and
its traditional values of trust, loyalty and Omertathe mafia
code of silence. The Calabrian mistrust of outsiders ensured
that illegal activitieshowever much they might be deplored
by some members of La Famigliawould never be revealed
to the police, because doing so would amount to a betrayal
of family or clanan unpardonable sin in a culture that
venerated blood ties above everything.
Returns from the early cannabis crops were so good that
orange and peach trees were bulldozed to clear paddocks
for larger crops. Some orchards were left intact to provide
camouflage for cannabis plants growing between the trees. In
post1966 decimal currency growers were receiving $100 to
$150 per pound, or around $22,400 to $33,600 per tonne of
dried, bagged cannabis leaf from wholesalers buying in bulk.
The person growing a crop might not be a principal
inthe organisation; in fact, the bosses were rarely found in
the paddocks. Farmers (usually La Famiglia trustees) who
undertook to grow and harvest a marijuana crop were paid

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 THE GRIFFITH WARS

a flat fee, with organisers picking up the tab for input costs
(seeds, water, fertiliser etc), living expenses and, if they were
unlucky enough to be arrested, legal fees.
Trimbole looked after wholesaling with help from his
lieutenant and confidant Winery Tony Sergi in New South
Wales, and from Gianfranco Frank Tizzoni in Victoria.
Trimbole had met and befriended Tizzoni while working
for Atlantic Amusements. Like Trimbole, Tizzoni had a job
supplying and servicing amusement machines. It did not
take the pair long to realise that, while supplying machines
to pubs and clubs, they could also cater to the burgeoning
cannabis market; it seemed like a logical progression.
La Famiglia established a legitimate fruit and vegetable
business, Trimboli, Sergi & Sergi, at Sydneys Haymarket
and Flemington markets as a means to transport and distrib-
ute cannabis and to funnel cash back to members of the
syndicate in Griffith. Huge sums of money would be paid
by Trimboli, Sergi & Sergi for phantom farm produce for
which no records could be traced.
Bob Trimbole studied the development, harvest, prepa-
ration and packaging techniques used in the Riverinas fruit
and vegetable industry and applied the same quality controls
to the cultivation and trafficking of cannabis.
But growing cannabis was not like growing cauliflowers.
Trimbole knew that the police had an eye-in-the-sky search-
ing for cannabis crops. Landsat satellites were used by the
agricultural industry to measure areas sown to rice crops
and to estimate the volume of irrigation water required each
season from the Murrumbidgee and Murray River systems.
These satellites could pinpoint and identify legitimate and
illicit crops grown throughout the Murrumbidgee, Coleam-
bally and Murray Irrigation Areas.

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 A NEW CROP

In order to avoid any disruption to supply in the event of

the police stumbling upon a mature crop, it was necessary to
have between ten and twenty crops growing every summer.
Trimbole supplemented the crops grown in southern New
South Wales and Victoria with strategic crops grown in
central and northern Queensland. These tropical plants
dwarfed those grown in temperate plantations.
Cannabis generated huge profits and the principals started
looking beyond the traditional farm investments for ways to
launder the cash. In Griffith, locals watched in awe and
disbelief as once-humble vegetable farmers began building
lavish new homesthe soon-to-be notorious grass castles
from the money they were making out of marijuana.
Australias marijuana sub- culture was beginning to
spread from its roots in coastal towns such as Byron Bay,
where the combination of a hippy lifestyle and a sub-tropical
climate ideally suited to the cultivation of cannabis attracted
both users and entrepreneurs. East coast newspapers such as
Wollongongs Illawarra Mercury, the Newcastle Morning
Herald (now the Newcastle Herald), the Gosford Star
and the Wyong Advocate regularly reported on the use of
cannabis and LSD in surfing communities. In Griffith,
Donald Mackay was not the only reader alarmed by reports
in his local paper, the Area News, about the growing number
of local teenagers experimenting with illicit drugs.

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